Talking to Strangers (About Music)

Sitting at a lookout on a beautiful Catskills trail, staring out toward the Hudson Valley framed below, I caught sight of a young woman running along. She seemed wet, and I wondered aloud to her if there was water from where she'd come. It was a hot day and I was looking to dive in somewhere. She came to a complete stop to regard me, and clearly considered my question a responsibility. She began looking in earnest on her phone for how to guide me to water. She hadn't been in any. She was just covered in sweat actually, she told me, laughing. I immediately liked her. I'm partial to redheads (I married one in the hopes of having redheaded children, but I didn't get them) and her sweet smile and dimples brought me up to chat with her on the trail. I am in awe of solo women hikers, especially ones like Monica who pull off the mountain-lady look with style and grace.  And she grew up in the area I am just getting to know, so I was eager to connect. Connect we did. Monica is an architect and a gardener...both skills I could use for my first-ever home, and she loves coming up to the area. Her friendly forthright demeanor had me at hello, and I hope you'll listen in to learn more from this Hudson Valley local about the divides (towns on either side of the mighty river) and how nice it is to find friendly folks:) Making friends from strangers like Monica makes my day!! 

Why are Tara Sanders & Earl Legister, Jr. together?

"We always connected on the dance floor," Tara says emphatically. And Earl agrees.

Of course, there is no way of ever knowing, exactly, what brings two people together, on the dance floor and off. That alchemy is long-studied, long-pondered. But for the last year-plus, the strange chemical equation called 'love' has Tara and Earl in its grips, and they are dancing together, and inspiring others to do the same, especially recently.

"When Covid first hit, and I was taking stock, I thought 'how can we spread joy, not the virus?'" Tara says. She is a yoga teacher, specifically trained in trauma-informed yoga. We met, Tara and I, at a mindfulness in education workshop at Omega Institute years back, and she'd reached out recently when I bought a house near where she lives outside of Woodstock, NY. But neither yoga nor mindfulness was what she and Earl decided to do to spread joy. Instead, they started making dance videos, lots of them, short choreographed dances, and putting them on social media.

People took notice, including me. I love to dance myself, and their videos were so fun and authentic. Then, too, after the George Floyd video, the fact of their biracial coupling...well, it seems a good time to talk about cross-pollination, about the love and connection that exists between people of different colors and backgrounds.

Listen in as we chat about this lovely couple's dancing, and their diligent work building community--check out more about Tara's yoga work at https://www.tarasanders.net/.

I found Dr. Edward Lee on Facebook, not exactly sure how. He is a renown professor of history at South Carolina's Winthrop University, an author and lecturer who looks back with reason on the 20th Century. He has more than 4,000 friends on Facebook, humans of all kinds, former students, friends, and strangers he has made friends with from around the world in his efforts to understand what happens, and why. He is clearly much respected for his open ears and open mind. 

Recently, Dr. Lee posted about his morning walks, and how nature reminded him of the great urgent need to "find common ground." That's when I decided to give him a call, and ask him some questions about history, how we got here and why, and how we avoid the mistakes of the past and find that more harmonious sweet spot where we can all live in peace. 

Spoiler alert: "Education can level the playing field," he says. And "we have to make fine arts available to everybody." 

Listen in to this meeting of likeminded strangers...it's always amazing to find kindred spirits in far-flung spots, people of different backgrounds and beliefs who can find lots and lots of lovely crossovers on the important things in the world. Thank you Dr. Lee!

Reason + Flexibility + Love. 

This is how we get in tune with the stranger within us, and the stranger outside.

Nose to the wind...breathe it in. 

In this episode, we feel our way through. 


Join us on our journey. 

The concept of "friend" on Facebook is a strange one. So often, people request to be 'friends' from all over the world, and I don't even know them.

"Why do you accept?" my husband asks. And I think about this. What better way to interact and learn about people from all over the world quickly and easily then social media?

Seven years ago, a request came in from a young woman in India named Navodita Singh. I accepted. In the ensuing years, Navodita--a beautiful always-smiling dancing woman-- has liked a variety of my posts, and even commented, and I have done the same on her posts. We seem like kindred spirits, trying to be positive and hopeful, trying to share our inspiration.

Recently, Navodita shared a post about her morning ritual with Chai, a traditional Indian beverage, and it occurred to me that this was exactly the reason to be friends with foreign strangers on Facebook. Sharing the rituals that give us pleasure, teaching others the ways in which we practice our daily joy and appreciation for life...I can use all the suggestions I can get!! And, by the way, I love Chai.

I reached out to Navodita immediately after seeing her post, and asked if she would like to chat with me on my podcast. She happily agreed, and here is the result: a conversation between "friends" thousands of miles away, about how we get our inspiration, starting with  a yummy morning beverage. (I told Navodita about the U.S. "Dirty Chai" I love, that adds a shot of espresso to a cup of Chai...yum!)

Here is Navodita's recipe for Chai:

Recipe 
For one cup of chai, you’ll need:

Half cup of water
Half cup of milk
1 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp tea leaves
Freshly grated ginger (for one cup you can have 10gm of ginger)
Additional ingredients: cardamom, lemongrass, cinnamon for additional aroma and taste.
Process :
To a pan add water and milk, boil it for 2 minutes then add tea leaves, sugar and ginger. Let the whole mixture boil for 6-7 minutes. That’s it! Viola, you’ve a cup of chai ready! Let me know how it goes.
(You can add the additional ingredients at the time of boiling it)

When I first met NYC artist Agni Zotis at a cafe near her apartment/studio in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, I knew she was a force to be reckoned with. In her iconic gravelly voice, inflected with a little Greek, by way of Queens, she offered up tales of the nonprofit she created to bring kids much-needed meditation and art, May Kids Transform. And she spoke of the inspiration she'd found for her latest series at the time -- amazing fluorescent depictions of the cosmos, backlit. When I brought my own InspireCorps interns to her place to get inspired last summer, it felt like Agni gave them nothing short of a true understanding of...well, the universe, and humans' small place in it. We sat down and chatted recently about Agni's new pandemic-inspired series, aptly named Silver Lining. She is working fast and furiously during this crazy time. After all, this is the woman whose t-shirts proclaim, BE NICE. She gets it. 

The great Americana singer Pi Jacobs has a wonderful idea of how to cope in the face of Covid-19: dance and sing. In her newly released single off her Two Truths And a Lie album,  called "No Sin to Be Poor," the effervescent Jacobs recalls her own childhood poverty, and how they managed to get through it by having fun and being silly. "There's no shame in needing help," she says in our chat. And while many people now might need that help, there is never a better time to find creative expressive ways of dealing with it. Her video for the song features real films made by family, friends and fans and posted on social media with the hashtag #NoSin2BPoor. Check it out here. 

A major silver lining of the current pandemic is that one can find usually VERY BUSY people at home, and eager to chat. One-time stranger, longtime friend Mr. Brian Elmquist has been very busy in recent years on the road around the world with his spectacularly popular 'Americana' band, The Lone Bellow. But I was able to catch up with him at home in Nashville with his lovely wife and beautiful kids and chat about a whole lot of things including his LIVE streaming concert on Instagram TONIGHT at 10 EST for the great NYC venue Rockwood Music Hall, where I used to see him play back when he was still waiting tables at Dizzy's Diner near my apartment in Brooklyn. Despite the sadly disrupted concert tour for The Lone Bellow's fabulous new album, Half Moon Light, Brian and the gang are still connecting to fans in creative ways, like this show on Instagram tonight to which you can buy tickets here to support @brianelmquist and @rockwoodmusichall. What I have loved about Brian since I first met him at Dizzy's is his incredible desire and talent for connecting to people in a real and honest way. I saw it in his eyes and heard it in his voice when first I saw him play at Rockwood. "You were like an angel," I told him during the podcast. And he was humble in receiving the compliment, as he is, but it's true. Brian first learned to perform in church growing up in Georgia, and his faith--in family, in community, in people, in life - is evident in his music and in talking to him, which I love to do every chance I get. Brian's commitment to building strong communities for all is no more evident than in his performance on behalf of my nonprofit InspireCorps for the kids at PS81. Watch the awesome video here, donated by Brian and his friend James Cernero. And listen in to this great conversation with Mr. Elmquist, at home.

To me, Raed El-Khazen is one of the best examples of how talking to strangers changes the course of one's life. It's hard to know what to say about this man I met 12 years ago at Dizzy's Diner in Park Slope, hard to pin down exactly why when his eyes sparkled at me and his gravelly voice spoke I felt the need to look more closely at myself and at the world. He has that affect on people:) Raed is a musician, and a dedicated devotee of learning and thinking about the ways in which humans need to pursue their passions in life. I so value the time we spent together that spring, summer and fall of 2012, talking over espresso at Colson Patisserie, walking paths I had feared to tread on my own in Prospect Park, working out at the gym (I still hear his voice in my ear, coaxing me to push harder in the weight room). It was, like now, a much needed time out to sort through things, a pause to figure how things might play out better in the future. 

We are very different, Raed and I. He grew up in Beirut, Lebanon, during a civil war, the son of a Palestinian mother and Lebanese father, who worked hard to support Palestinian refugees. I grew up in sleepy Tucson, Arizona, the daughter of Jewish Zionist parents from Chicago (my mother) and New Jersey (my father.) When we met, I'd just quit my job as a journalist with Advertising Age to raise my young boys, and he was a young childless guitarist working at Dizzy's. There were things we could have found to divide us, but what drew us to one another (I think) was a great desire to live free and clear of other people's rules, and to find for ourselves a reason for being. I credit Raed and the amazing global network of friends from Berklee School of Music I met through him for giving me the great gift of music, allowing me access to the incredible New York music scene, and pushing me to find my own ways of making rhythm, of finding harmony.

The summer we hung out, I started seeing dragonflies, big beautiful ones, everywhere I went. They seemed to be showing me my path. I imagined out loud to him one day in the park that we could make a movie of them, flying around, wild but directed, to his guitar. He smiled and told me he'd already made that movie about dragonflies, with his friend Shannon. In the fall, just before he left, back to Beirut, I got a tattoo, of a dragonfly, to remind me of that special time, to honor the important natural connection that can be made between two humans when they have the audacity to do as they please, and a great faith in talking to strangers.

I met Nena Hribar at my friend Saskia's wedding in Fethiye, Turkey, last spring. She is from the tiny European country of Slovenia, and was one of 14 women from all over the world--a mini United Nations--with whom I sat naked in the sauna at a beautiful Turkish Bath (otherwise known as a Hamam). 

We found ourselves together at the airport in Dalaman, waiting for a plane to Istanbul, and I recorded our chat.  I've been looking for the perfect opportunity to put our amazing conversation out into the world, and today seems like it. Today, I drew the Black Panther card in the Medicine Cards deck I pull from every morning. In the explanation of the Black Panther animal medicine, in the book from Jamie Sams & David Carson, it says, "Embracing the Unknown." It went on to say that the Black Panther appears when you need to remember not to worry about the future. "Trust that you are not supposed to mentally 'figure it out' at this time.' 

I immediately thought of Nena, and the story she told me of her pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago, of her amazing trust in what she calls "The Love Universe." Her story is an inspiration in putting fear and worry aside, and putting yourself in the mindset of whatever will be will be, hand in hand with the fellow travelers of this Earth, first strangers and then, if we allow it, forever friends.